NHS trust predicts £2.5m savings from investment in IT solution
Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has contracted Swiss Post Solutions (SPS) to digitise its patient health records, in a step towards becoming “paper-lite” by 2023.
SPS chose IMMJ Systems to provide the electronic document management (EDM) component of the overall solution, and to deliver MediViewer, its next generation digital platform which enables digitised clinical content and electronic patient records (EPR) at the point of care.
The solution is predicted to streamline internal processes and deliver cost savings of £2.5 million per annum.
WHY IT MATTERS
The 1,200-bed teaching facility is the largest acute hospital in the Norfolk and Waveney region and one of the largest acute trusts in the country.
MediViewer is hoped to transform the way the trust provides information to clinicians by making patient records available to staff remotely.
IMMJ’s SmartIndex technology facilitates a number of search capabilities within the platform, including real-time dynamic indexing, high speed document searching, and text filtering functions within the HTML based client app.
The trust believes this solution will improve patient care by enabling greater collaboration across different sites and improving access to clinical data.
THE LARGER CONTEXT
Bolton NHS Foundation Trust recently announced it went live with the Sunrise Acute Care electronic patient record (EPR) system from Chicago-headquartered health IT giant Allscripts.
It follows Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust going live with the Allscripts Sunrise EPR at the end of last year.
Meanwhile, Dr Afzal Chaudhry, director of digital and CCIO at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, told Healthcare IT News about how patient care has been transformed since implementing its EPR in 2014.
ON THE RECORD
Anthony Lundrigan, chief information officer of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Norfolk and Waveney sustainability and transformation partnership (STP), said: “A huge amount of time and resource is diverted into manually managing and moving patients notes to different locations. We therefore needed to find a solution to help us reduce paper processes and become more operationally efficient.
“This is a first and significant step in delivering our five-year digital strategy for the trust and is part of a wider digital strategy for Norfolk and Waveney STP.”
Ryan Reed, head of public sector at SPS, said: “This is one of the largest electronic medical record projects in the UK and one that demonstrates the tangible benefits of what can be achieved quickly and at large scale.”
Lisa Harris, chief operations officer at IMMJ Systems, said: “Our team will work alongside trust resources to deliver MediViewer and implement transformational change to improve access to patient records and streamline the associated business processes.”
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